Chicopee City Council pays old bills for snowplowing

A highway sign warns of a travel advisory during the Februrary 2013 snowstorm Republican file photo

CHICOPEE — A series of snowstorms in February and March meant the city spent more than $536,000 in plowing, sanding and salting expenses this past winter.

City officials always deficit spend for snow and ice removal, which is allowed by state law, and then later use money left over from the previous year’s budget, called free cash, or funds from the stabilization account to balance the budget at the end of the winter.

This week the 13-member City Council voted unanimously to use some of the free cash to fund the $536,197 bill for overtime, supplies and hiring private contractors.

“The February storm was declared an emergency and we will be getting about $130,000 back for it,” said City Councilor Jean J. Croteau Jr.

The Feb. 8 blizzard dumped about 18 inches of snow between the afternoon and overnight in Chicopee. Later the Federal Emergency Management Agency declared the storm a disaster and pledged to reimburse Western Massachusetts towns and cities 75 percent of their costs of cleaning up afterward, Mayor Michael D. Bissonnette said.

That will mean the city will get about $135,000 reimbursed. It typically takes the agency a year or more to reimburse the money.

Although the city does deficit spend, it does not mean that private contractors who were hired to plow and employees who worked overtime have not been paid, City Councilor James K. Tillotson said.

“The snow plowers were paid from unencumbered funds,” he said, explaining the $536,000 will now be returned to the unencumbered funds account.

In the previous fiscal year, the city spent more than $6.7 million in storm cleanup mostly due to the historic October 2011 snowstorm where heavy wet snow brought down hundreds of trees and power lines. The storm was declared a national disaster and most of the money was reimbursed with state and federal funds.

The city spent about $1 million on snow removal in the 2010-2011 winter season, which brought an unusually large amount of snow. In the previous year it spent about $451,000.